A Bottom-up Account of Occupy Wall Street

Highly educated young adults were overrepresented
among OWS activists and supporters, a group with
limited ethnic/racial or class diversity

Most OWS activists and supporters were deeply
skeptical of the mainstream political system as an
effective vehicle for social change. For some, this
skepticism intensified after the election of Barack
Obama in 2008 failed to produce the changes they
had been led to expect.

OWS was able to attract supporters with a wide
variety of specific concerns, many of whom had
not worked together before, This was in large part
because it made no formal “demands,” and united
around the “We Are the 99%” slogan.